English words from Chinese

This list parallels my similar pages on words from Arabic and Amerindian languages. The main sources are the OED, the AHD, a number of Chinese dictionaries, ZhongWen.com, and Wikipedia (for nailing down the exact characters).

I’ve included a number of proper names, partly because it's fun to know that (e.g.) Mao means 'wool', partly because Chinese place names tend to have clear, simple etymologies with useful words in them.

M. = Mandarin, C. = Cantonese (given, I’m afraid, in whatever transliteration was near at hand). I use = rather than ← to emphasize that the relationship between the two is cognacy, not derivation. That is, the Cantonese word doesn’t derive from the Mandarin; both derive from an older Middle Chinese form.

Japanese has borrowed Chinese words at various periods. For instance, the gei in geisha doesn’t derive directly from modern Mandarin yì, but from an earlier stage of the language, closer to Middle Chinese ngiäi (Karlgren’s reconstruction). Note that Japanese words may be constructed from Chinese morphemes rather than borrowed as a unit, much as we created 'telephone' from Greek elements. (Another complication: some words are ateji, which use Chinese characters for their phonetic value only; these aren't always easy to recognize.)

Chinese seems designed to defeat romanizers-- there’s no system that suggests pronunciations to English speakers without explanations. The pinyin romanization used in the above list shouldn’t be read as if it were English. It would take pages and sound clips to teach really correct pronunciation; but you can use these rules as a starting point:

Consonants

The sounds b d g don’t differ from p t k by voicing; rather, the latter series are aspirated, the first aren’t. Technically, the b in běn is an unaspirated p, like our p in spend, as opposed to the aspirated p in pen. If that doesn’t make much sense to you, English b d g aren’t terribly wrong.

h is a velar fricative, like German ch in Bach.

As a first approximation, ch zh q j can all be pronounced like English ch. However, ch zh are retroflex, while q j are palatalized. And zh j are unaspirated. Don’t pronounce j like a French j.

Also as a first approximation, sh x can be pronounced like English sh. In fact sh is retroflexed and x is palatalized.

Pronounce c z as ts. The z is unaspirated.

Initial r- is retroflex, though to me it sounds assibilated, like a cross between American English r and zh.

Vowels

The pinyin vowels are a bit quirky (though other systems are really no better). Somewhat strangely, -ian is pronounced ien, -ong is pronounced ung, and -ui is -wei.

i after ch j sh s z c isn’t so much a vowel as a voiced prolongation of the consonant. shi sounds, in fact, very much like English sure, while chi zhi sound like churr, jurr. si is sz-- which looks impossible but in fact isn’t hard at all to say.

Tones

First tone (mā) is just a high pitch: a word in first tone should be noticeably higher than your normal tone of voice.

Second tone (má) is a rising pitch, much as we’d use in the initial syllable in “Ma? You there?”

Third tone (mǎ), in isolation, drops from a neutral pitch, then rises again ; in connected speech, it just drops. Think “Ma, are you listening?”